From the Pastures: New young worker

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. It’s been a green — albeit hot — August this year. The weather has been more conducive for crop development than human comfort. Pastures have been keeping ahead of the sheep and cattle here so far. Wet soil has delayed cover crop planting on the wheat stubble so far, so I think I might just try some oats and peas on some of the 60 acres eventually instead of planting a multi-species mix on all of it.

Hopefully the frost-killed oats will be grazeable after December, when most of my cover crops are grazed out. We shall see. At least there is moisture to get them started. Some summers the seed has just sat in dry soil waiting for the next rain event.

One activity here that has been pretty constant is lawn mowing. It’s never a moneymaker, but has to be done unless I could fence off the yard and graze the sheep on it. They don’t, however, distinguish between the flowers and shrubs and the grass.

Fortunately we have a new young worker to take on that task and many others, Nathaniel. As a newcomer to the farming game, he’s been an eager learner and has been a blessing for us old folks who are starting to wear out. He’s not afraid of work and looks for things to do when one job is done — a rare specimen nowadays, I think. Nathaniel will be marketing his first-ever pastured organic broiler crop as his entrepreneurial debut. If he can put up with us, he can stick around and continue to do the heavy lifting.

Ruth’s cow, Ella, has been raising four calves so far this year since Ruth’s hip and knee pain has idled the milking machine. With the cost of milk replacer amounting to about $164 per calf, now Ella is earning her keep. If we would wean each group of four every eight weeks, she could easily take care of eight to 12 each lactation. Last year, she did nine while being milked once a day.

I’m tempted to get a few more nurse cows from the dairy we get our beef/dairy cross bottle calves from and save me lots of labor. That would only work if the cows would accept the calves as easily as Ella does. We only have to introduce the new calves to her and she always accepts them. We just slaughtered her first calf from 2020 that lost her calf last winter and fattened up all spring on grass alone, no grain. Even at that age, the steaks and ground beef from that Jersey/Holstein cross were terrific. We sold two quarters to two fellows from Chicago who thought the same. I’m going to try raising some of my Charolais/Jerseys that way, too, if I can keep good forage in front of them.

This crazy cattle market offers profits now on any size — calf, yearling or finished, making it risky not to sell now and instead carry them for two-plus years on grass for the payout. It’s so much quicker to get lambs to market, which gives them the advantage, I guess.

Some years we have good crops, and some years we have good prices; seldom the same year. This year it looks like here we will have a bountiful harvest. I hope the same for all of you. Happy trails.